No threat to Punjab peace by prisoners’ transfer: Badal

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IANS

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Updated

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14 June 2015,

9:39 pm

Chandigarh: Defending the transfer of prisoners with terrorist background hailing from Punjab back to the state from jails in other states, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday said the move will not impact peace and harmony in his state.

“The SAD-BJP alliance government has always accorded top priority to preserving peace, communal harmony and brotherhood in the state and its every decision is aimed at promoting these values.

“State governments across the country have been following the policy of transferring prisoners from one to another and Punjab is hardly an exception to it,” Badal told media persons on the sidelines of a function near Phagwara town.

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, a Khalistani terrorist convicted in the assassination attempt on former Indian Youth Congress president Maninderjit Singh Bitta in New Delhi in which several people died in September 1993, was last week transferred to the Amritsar prison from Delhi.

Bhullar has spent over 20 years in jail and there have been appeals from his friends and radical organisations to release him on humanitarian grounds as he was mentally not stable.

Badal said “each and every decision of the state government is aimed at preserving the hard earned peace, communal harmony and amity in the state”.

He said law and order will not be compromised.

Slamming the Congress for misleading people on the Bhullar issue, Badal questioned the party, saying: “Congress leaders owe an answer to the people as to how militancy could revive with the transfer of indisposed person like Professor Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar in the state.”

He said Bhullar’s family had been pleading with the central and state governments to transfer him to a jail in Punjab so that they will be able to meet him frequently.

“Apprehensions regarding revival of militancy in the state with this decision are totally baseless and Congress leaders are just creating a fuss over the issue to score brownie points before the media,” Badal added.

Punjab saw Sikh militancy from 1981 to 1995 in which over 25,000 lives were lost.